A Brief History of Netflix Streaming Technology

Netflix started streaming in 2007 with an Internet Explorer plugin that hosted Windows Media Player. Today, there are more than 80 million active Netflix devices including smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and connected TV’s. This session walks through the technical history of the Netflix streaming service, looking at some of the key engineering decisions, codec and packaging, and a few key hacks. Some of topics that will be covered include Netflix’s first adaptive streaming client, their most unusual project, the BD-Live adaptive streaming client, and how Netflix developed their iPad app in just 60 days.